Apache Spark installation + ipython/jupyter notebook integration guide for macOS

Spark+ipython_on_MacOS.md

Apache Spark installation + ipython/jupyter notebook integration guide for macOS

Tested with Apache Spark 2.1.0, Python 2.7.13 and Java 1.8.0_112

For older versions of Spark and ipython, please, see also previous version of text.

Install Java Development Kit

Download and install it from oracle.com

Add following code to your e.g. .bash_profile

# For Apache Spark
if which java > /dev/null; then export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home); fi

Install Apache Spark

You can use Mac OS package manager Brew (http://brew.sh/)

brew update
brew install scala
brew install apache-spark

Set up env variables

Add following code to your e.g. .bash_profile

# For a ipython notebook and pyspark integration
if which pyspark > /dev/null; then
  export SPARK_HOME="/usr/local/Cellar/apache-spark/2.1.0/libexec/"
  export PYTHONPATH=$SPARK_HOME/python:$SPARK_HOME/python/build:$PYTHONPATH
  export PYTHONPATH=$SPARK_HOME/python/lib/py4j-0.10.4-src.zip:$PYTHONPATH
fi

You can check SPARK_HOME path using following brew command

$ brew info apache-spark
apache-spark: stable 2.1.0, HEAD
Engine for large-scale data processing
https://spark.apache.org/
/usr/local/Cellar/apache-spark/2.1.0 (1,312 files, 213.9M) *
  Built from source on 2017-02-13 at 00:58:12
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/apache-spark.rb

Also check py4j version and subpath, it may differ from version to version.

Ipython profile

Since profiles are not supported in jupyter and now you can see following deprecation warning

$ ipython notebook --profile=pyspark
[TerminalIPythonApp] WARNING | Subcommand `ipython notebook` is deprecated and will be removed in future versions.
[TerminalIPythonApp] WARNING | You likely want to use `jupyter notebook` in the future
[W 01:45:07.821 NotebookApp] Unrecognized alias: '--profile=pyspark', it will probably have no effect.

It seems that it is not possible to run various custom startup files as it was with ipython profiles. Thus, the easiest way will be to run pyspark init script at the beginning of your notebook manually or follow alternative way.

Run ipython

$ jupyter-notebook

Initialize pyspark

In [1]: import os
        execfile(os.path.join(os.environ["SPARK_HOME"], 'python/pyspark/shell.py'))
Out[1]: <pyspark.context.SparkContext at 0x10a982b10>

sc variable should be available

In [2]: sc
Out[2]: <pyspark.context.SparkContext at 0x10a982b10>

Alternatively

You can also force pyspark shell command to run ipython web notebook instead of command line interactive interpreter. To do so you have to add following env variables:

export PYSPARK_DRIVER_PYTHON=jupyter
export PYSPARK_DRIVER_PYTHON_OPTS=notebook

and then simply run

$ pyspark

which will open a web notebook with sc available automatically.

Works amazingly well!, thanks a ton for this!

Hi there,

I followed the guideline for installation, but for my own job I face the similar problem that is also described here.

Any idea how I can fix it? I have followed the solutions that commonly say the problem could be wrong path specifications, but my paths seem to be fine, and testing different components such as python, pyspark, py4j seem to be working fine standalone.